Richard stamelman is a photographer who is attracted to abstractions as found in nature: abstractions of color, form, texture,  detail, light, and shadow. He looks for events, objects, phenomena where the ordinary suddenly becomes extraordinary.

He is an emeritus professor of romance languages and comparative literature at williams college.  At williams and at wesleyan university, the university of colorado-boulder, dartmouth college, and the college of william and mary, he has taught courses on nineteenth and twentieth century french poetry, on world poetry in translation, on the poetics and politics of fashion, and on the history of photography from the early 19th century to the present. He has just completed a book on the relationship between photography and poetry.

He is the author of lost beyond telling: representations of death and absence in modern french poetry and perfume. Joy, obsession, scandal, sin. A cultural history of fragrance from 1750 to the present, as well as other books and essays on nineteenth and twentieth century french literature, art, photography, and culture. He is the translator of poetry and essays from the french. 

An honorary member of the société française des parfumeurs, he was made chevalier dans l’ordre des palmes académiques in 1993 and was awarded a john simon guggenheim memorial foundation fellowship six years later.